"Your Excellency, if you carry out that sentence you will be committing a crime--a monstrous judicial crime." The Governor returned the paper to his desk, and then rose and said, with a ring of sarcasm in his voice, "So I am the criminal, am I? Well, I am responsible for public security in this island, and as long as I am here I am going to see that it is preserved. Offences of this kind have been too frequent of late and they can only be put down by law. The prisoner in the present case has been justly tried and rightly condemned, and it shall be my business to see that she pays the penalty of her crime." Stowell's pale face had become scarlet, his lower lip was trembling. Outside the sea was sparkling in the sunlight; a band was playing far off on the promenade. "Your Excellency," said Stowell, quivering all over, "it will be a life-long grief to me to resist your authority, but I must tell you at once that if you order that girl's execution it shall never be carried out." "What do you say?" "I say it shall never be carried out." "Why not?" "Because _I_ shall prevent it." The Governor rose. His face was red, his throat had swelled; his lips were compressed. "Do you mean that you will go over my head...." "I do...." The Governor brushed Stowell aside in making for the bell. "There's no heed for that. I'm going, Sir," said Stowell, and at the next moment the Governor was alone in his room, speechless with astonishment and wrath. Going down the corridor Stowell passed the open door of the library--the room in which he had parted from Fenella. In quarrelling with her father had he burnt the last bridge by which Fenella and he could come together? "But, God forgive me, I could do nothing else--nothing whatever." II Fenella found that the tragic news had reached Castle Rushen before her. Bessie had received it at first with incredulity. Her expectation of pardon had reached the point of conviction, and every morning as she rose from her plank bed, she had said to herself, "It will came to-day." When Tommy Vondy went into the condemned cell, blowing his nose repeatedly and talking about death, how it came to everybody sooner or later, Bessie looked at him with terror and screamed, "Oh, God help me! God help me!" For a while she raved like a madwoman. Everybody had lied to her and deceived her, and the Deemster had done nothing to save her, because he wanted her out of the way. But after a while an idea occurred to her and she became calm. Alick Gell! If Alick would go up to London and see the King and tell him that she had never intended to kill her baby he would forgive her. And then Alick would come galloping back, at the last moment perhaps, waving a paper over his head and crying, "Stop!"